But hitherto they were not blessed with children, and Mary was jeered at more than once, the people saying that her barrenness was a punishment sent by God.

The oases of this great wilderness are those places in which there is an absence of the general fertility: barrenness in such circumstances is a relief,because it allows both freedom and repose.

Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry; and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had only the task of rejecting or selecting.

"Although the barrenness of language, and the want of words be doubtless one cause of the invention of tropes."Ib., p. 135.

Barrenness, however, was a reproach that could no longer be justly applied to the group, and most especially to those portions of it which had received the attention of its people.

A frightful barrenness, and the most smiling fertility, were in absolute contact: patches of green, that had been accidentally favored by some lucky formation of the ground, sometimes appearing like oases of the desert, in the very centre of a sterility that would put the labor and the art of man at defiance for a century.

'All barrenness is comparative,' iii. 76.

It is a ruder scene of rocks and trees, Where even barrenness is beautywhere The glassy lake, below the mountain bare, Curls up its waters 'neath the casual breeze;